I think sexual fantasies should sometimes aim to be dangerous, vertiginous and uncomfortable - that's in their nature, one side of them. I don't often feel that while writing, but sometimes after it's been published here, or in reading it for myself, feeling that now it's spelled out and open to see for others, it may or may not be something I would want to carry through in real life, but the wish, the need or thrill is there. Tessa once said as we were discussing this that a core point of submission was the wish to be cherished in your lowest, most primitive form, one could also read that as your most rough and "sinful" form (and thereby being forgiven and accepted deep in your most naked being). With her intuition I think she uncovered a central truth there: needing to be taken and made to give from your most hidden, most primitive layers is part of submission, and that may come out in strange forms.

I'm turned on sometimes by reading about punishments that would in real life just be unforgivably crude and barbaric - I recall a story (by a mainstream writer, skilfully designed to be hot but also to look at power exchange in a not-just-bdsm sense) about a young, beautiful noblewoman at the russian 18th century court of Elizabeth (reigned at mid-century, d.1762) who gets framed for adultery, is flogged in the presence of the palace guard - brute, big guys - courtiers and the sadistic Sovereign herself, and then surrendred to the soldiers to be fucked like a camp whore. Being carried out to the barracks she whispers that she is pregnant; the soldiers don't think it's true by their rough methods and it's reported to the Czarina, her enemy, who on the spot orders that her tongue be cut out "for lying - she was already a whore anyway" after which she is packed off to Siberia. The child came out dead, we are told in one brief sentence. This is barbarism, but also a very turning-on story precisely because of the terse way it's told and the brute irrevocability of what she has to undergo (anyone else with me in feeling tingled by the extraction of her tongue?) Well, I know I felt both hot and guilty when I came upon that one in my teens....